Coronavirus updates: State reports over 49,000 new cases, 468 new deaths

A record-breaking 125,544 people in the United States are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, with six states -- Alabama, California, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas -- reporting record hospitalizations on Jan. 3.

While daily COVID-19 figures remain skewed because of a holiday-related backlog, data from December shows a grim trend, according to an ABC News analysis of data collected by The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the U.S. outbreak. December was the worst month so far for infections, hospitalizations and deaths. In less than eight weeks, the U.S. jumped from 10 million cases to 20 million cases on Jan. 1.

Over the course of December, the U.S. reported 77,082 deaths from the virus, bringing the national death toll to 351,590, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The U.S., which leads the world in COVID-19 fatalities, accounts for nearly 20% of the world's total death toll.

In different terms, 1 in every 940 Americans has died of COVID-19.

ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.

Scotland will re-enter a nationwide lockdown at midnight in an effort to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced the move Monday, telling Scottish Parliament that people across the mainland will be required to stay at home until at least the end of January. People must work from home where possible, group exercise will be banned, places of worship must shutter and schools will remain closed to most students.

The island areas will remain under Level 3 restrictions but will be closely monitored, Sturgeon said. All of Scotland has been under either Level 3 or 4 restrictions in recent weeks.

The situation will be reviewed on Jan. 18, Sturgeon said.

The new restrictions come as the country battles a rise in COVID-19 infections, with 15% of tests currently returning a positive result. Sturgeon told Scottish Parliament that she was "more concerned about the situation we face now than I have been at any time since March last year."

"It is essential that we further limit interaction between different households to stem the spread and bring the situation back under control, while we vaccinate more people," the first minister said. "In short, we must return for a period to a situation much closer to the lockdown of last March."

More than 1 million people in New York state have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

The Empire State surpassed the grim milestone over the weekend, becoming only the fourth U.S. state to do so. To date, New York has confirmed a total of 1,023,897 COVID-19 cases, including at least 38,415 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins data.

California has the highest total of any U.S. state by far with more than 2.4 million cases, followed by Texas's 1.8 million and Florida's 1.3 million.

Schools fully reopened across Kenya on Monday for the first time in nearly 10 months.

The Kenyan government shut down schools nationwide in March, after the East African nation confirmed its first COVID-19 case. The government reopened schools for students in grades 4, 8 and 12 who were preparing for final exams. The remainder -- some 16 million schoolchildren - were expected to return to classrooms Monday.

The government has asked school officials and teachers to implement public health measures, such as social distancing and hygiene guidelines, to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Still, teachers have expressed concern over the safety of their students and themselves amid the pandemic. Wilson Sossion, secretary-general of the Kenya National Union of Teachers, told BBC's "Newsday" that the level of preparation on COVID-19 safety measures ahead of the reopening was "quite inadequate."

"When you give such directives to schools and you don't give them funding," Sossion said, "how are they expected to implement?"

Kenya, a country of 51 million people, has reported more than 96,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, including at least 1,685 deaths, according to the latest data from the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.